I was once an ardent edgy atheist. During my high school days, I was passionately opposed to the concept of religion within society, and felt that all religious people were deluded fools compared to the intellectual might of atheists. I watched YouTube channels like The Amazing Atheist, the Armoured Skeptic, Chris Ray Gun, and most ironically, Computing Forever (who has not gone back to extreme Catholicism). I read Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris; and in consuming all of this content, I thought I was intellectually enriching myself. I saw them as the true thinkers pushing back against the religious dogma of the rest of the world; that they would usher in a new utopia of rationalism and skepticism.
In this world, I believed that a truly rational and fair society could be born from capitalism and debate, wherein markets not only dictated the economy, but thought as well. This ‘free market place of ideas’ has become something of a meme, but my quasi-libertarianism, or what I would call “American Libertarianism”, paired with my exaggerated atheism, propelled me towards the right. I was rational, the religious, liberal, leftists were anti-intellectuals. I failed to see the irony in referring to others as an anti-intellectual when the extent to my philosophical reading regarding atheism was Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris. Sure, I also read Bertrand Russel, but he was hardly my focus. I saw Russel as instead the foundational thinker for the modern movement of atheism, and as such his writing was of inherent less value than the newer, more radical thinkers. I don’t think I need to explain why this is ridiculous, but I’m going to anyway. Foundational understandings of topics are essential when criticizing its derivatives, as it provides the necessary context to properly understand and interpret those derivatives. This was unnecessary to me at the age of 14, as I figured that someone as smart as Richard Dawkins didn’t need to be criticized, as his ideas transcended the scrutiny that I applied to any and all other beliefs.
I hated religion, and in that hate, I believed that the alternative to religion must be superior. In saying that, I had not considered a replacement for religion properly. I figured that killing religion would allow the free market to take over, and everything would be resolved after that. I had not considered the need for community, meaning, and connection that religion provides, only the truth that atheism presents. I now see that killing religion while not providing sufficient replacements for these areas of life that religion provides is effectively throwing the baby out with the bath water.
In my time as an extreme atheist, I was dealing with the most intense period of depression I had ever faced up to that point. My home life was a nightmare, I was constantly running from my own trauma, and I didn’t have an outlet to properly cope with my chaotic life beyond complain on the internet to other atheists. This is to say nothing of the hormonal mess that all teenagers are, nor the false belief that I was mature; that I ought to be respected as a thinker on the level of any adult. I had not considered the importance of growth, experience, development, and true maturity. I now know that even in my mid-twenties, I’m still a child. I know so little about the world, all I can do is approximate an informed opinion. This complete lack of self-awareness is cringe-inducing to my current self, and I’m sure my equal lack of self awareness now will be equally if not more cringe-inducing to my future self, but in my time living on my own, paying bills, and actually facing my trauma in therapy and through the support of a long-term partner, I’ve realized some basic truths about myself and the atheist movement. Primarily, I realized that I was right to question the existence of God, but was wrong to question the existence of religion.
I still don’t believe in God, but now I consider myself to be at least culturally religious, if not practically so. In college, through some very good friends, I reconnected with my Jewish heritage. Although I was raised Catholic, our family had been Jewish prior to conversion to Catholicism, and the ethnic connection to Judaism never left. My mom always made sure we revered our Jewish-ness. We read Jewish literature, practiced Jewish traditions, spoke a mix of Yiddish and English, and some of my family on my mom’s side even practiced Judaism separate from the rest of the family’s Catholicism or atheism. Although I do not miss Catholicism, and truly never enjoyed Catholic practices and customs, my desire to purge myself of all religion had me deny my Jewish-ness, and in doing so, I left a hole in my spirit that I attempted to fill with anything I could grasp at. I thought general intellectualism could fill that hole, so I read as much as I could, wrote as much as I could, and spend a considerable amount of time formulating my beliefs. Yet this did not work, I still felt an emptiness that I couldn’t account for at the time. I missed my family, my traditions, my culture, my people. It wasn’t the faith that I wanted, nor the religion, really; it was the community. In losing my connection to my people, I was more alone than I had ever been. Yet, I believed my loneliness was worth it, if only to finally know truth. I had not considered the alternative: religion minus spirituality. Instead of discarding my people, my culture, and my community, I only needed to discard the aspects of the religion that pertained to truth and fact. My lack of faith in spirituality did not need to divorce me from my people. This was something I discovered when attending shul with a dear friend in college. Although my declining health and COVID could not allow for in-person attendance to shul, I made sure to attend as often as I could remotely. I have since been a fairly observant Reform/Secular Jew, practicing the culture and community of Judaism, as well as honoring my family and heritage, all without believing in God. In that sense, I’m still an atheist. A hard-line atheist, even. I am a materialist, and as such, only believe in what is material and observable. However, I don’t identify as much with the term atheist anymore. Instead, I generally tell people I’m a secular Jew. I love my Jewish blood, I love my people, and I love my family. I wish I had known sooner that I didn’t have to abandon that all in order to question the nature of reality. To any edgy atheists out there who want to reject all religion, no matter what: consider me, a secular Jew who has learned to love being religious but not spiritual.
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